Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was uncharacteristically supportive of Vladimir Putin in an interview with Time published Friday, in which he blamed the U.S. for starting a "new Cold War."
"I learned that you can listen to the Americans, but you cannot trust them," he told Time. "When they get an idea to do something, they’ll turn the world onto a different axis to get it done."
Gorbachev said Putin's annexation of Crimea in March was in the interest of the majority there. It's a stark change of tone for Gorbachev, who criticized Putin for his authoritarianism as recently as 2013.
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Read the full interview here.
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